Biohacking with Oxygen

Heard about Exercising with Oxygen Training (EWOT)?

In 2008, do-it-yourself (DIY) biology, also known as, “biohacking” emerged with the aim of making biology accessible to non-scientists.

Biohacking your body for better performance

Oxygen is a nutrient that provides nourishment essential for growth and the maintenance of life. Oxygen can be used to overcome injuries or trauma, to help alleviate pain or chronic inflammation from medical conditions or sometimes, simply improve our performance capacity and quality of life. Increasing our oxygen exposure can improve our mental and physical capacities for performing tasks.

Why do we need to biohack our body's natural way of oxygen absorption?

While oxygen proves to be an essential nutrient of life, it turns out that it also is a limiting factor to our ability to make energy. While the theory of increase oxygen absorption = increase capacity to heal, detoxify, produce energy and perform, there is one major challenge. It is not an easy task to increase oxygen absorption because of our physiology and ability to carry oxygen.

Generally speaking, without any cardiovascular or respiratory condition, we are all carrying almost all the oxygen we are capable of carrying. Our “optimal” dose of oxygen is 97-100% red blood cell oxygen saturation. Under normal conditions we rely on our red blood cells to carry oxygen to our tissues and cells and in our bodies right now, they are almost already completely saturated with oxygen, only able to carry 1-3% more at any time. So, even if we had a mask and a tank of oxygen we can only increase our absorption by a few percent which is not really enough to make a significant difference to our health the way we expect it to.

Hence, we look to Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy (HBOT) – by far, the most powerful way to deliver oxygen and change our physiology with regards to oxygenation of our tissues and cells.

HBOT looks not only at oxygen, but also at pressure. It is through pressure that we absorb oxygen. In a hyperbaric environment, we can control the amount of pressure exerted on our bodies and the amount of time we are in this pressurised environment. The amount of time we are in the environment, paired with the higher pressure allow us to predictably control the amount of increased oxygen absorption we can take into our cells. Once absorbed, the “excess” or increase in oxygen is used to produce energy, thus increasing our capacity for working tissues to perform or increase the capacity of healing and recovery.